When Cabrera left, SF Giants thrived

Updated 11:40 pm, Monday, September 24, 2012

Outfielder Melky Cabrera, who played for the Giants in 2012, received a 50-game suspenion that year for a violation of Major League Baseball’s drug policy.

Outfielder Melky Cabrera, who played for the Giants in 2012, received a 50-game suspenion that year for a violation of Major League Baseball’s drug policy.

Photo: Hunter Martin / Getty Images

When Cabrera left, SF Giants thrived

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On that August day when Melky Cabrera's suspension came down, manager Bruce Bochy convened a team meeting and conveyed several messages. Besides challenging all his players to play better, he told them not to dwell on the loss.

Moaning about Cabrera would not bring him back or overturn the suspension. Just let it go.

In one of the most startling surges for a team hit with such a hammer, the Giants won 25 of their next 35 games to take the National League West championship by a landslide.

During the team's clubhouse celebration after Saturday's clinching win, a clearer picture emerged of how Cabrera's suspension and the subsequent meeting proved to be the biggest positive turning point of the season for the Giants.

"That moment right there sort of got us going," reliever Javier Lopez said.

Indeed, after losing that afternoon to the Nationals, the Giants regrouped after a day off, then took five of six games on a trip to San Diego and Los Angeles, including a sweep at Dodger Stadium that propelled the Giants into first place for good.

Rather than soar, the Dodgers tanked. They unquestionably improved their roster but learned the perils of integrating so many players into high-impact roles at once.

In San Francisco, the opposite occurred. The Giants lost one of their keystones and were forced to rely on one another more and spread their production among a greater number of people, rather than wait for Cabrera and Buster Posey to provide the preponderance of a game's offense with one or two bursts.

The Giants got better at "keeping the line moving," as Bochy likes to say. Angel Pagan's resurgence atop the lineup, Marco Scutaro's ability to fit into the second spot and Brandon Belt's improvement down in the order proved as important as Posey's ability to carry a lot of Cabrera's offensive load on his back.

Which is a big reason Cabrera is hardly missed and there will be no great hue and cry to place him on a potential National League Championship Series roster when his suspension ends, even if the Giants meet their obligation under the collective bargaining agreement to reinstate him from the restricted list.

According to league sources, the Giants had little choice but to activate Guillermo Mota when his 100-game drug suspension ended in August. Had they blocked him from pitching, they essentially would have slapped Mota with a second punishment and might have lost a grievance filed by the Players Association.

The postseason is different because all teams make baseball judgments in picking 25 players for each series. So, the reasoning goes, Cabrera would have no more standing to file a grievance than Barry Zito in 2010 when he was left off every playoff roster.

Besides, industry sources believe, Cabrera would not dare get litigious - which team owners hate - and file a grievance when he is trying to rehabilitate his image ahead of free agency.

Some Giants would welcome Cabrera back. On SiriusXM radio Monday, Sergio Romo said he would be among them.

"He is on our team. He started the season on our team. He is a San Francisco Giant," Romo said. "In my eyes, yeah, when he's able to come back, why wouldn't we want him to come back? Look at his ability. Look at his talent. Imagine how much better he can make us on the field."

But it's a fair bet the majority of players prefer things as they are now. Just read between the lines of Posey's comments Saturday about Cabrera's suspension.

"I don't think anybody in the clubhouse took it all that hard," he told several reporters. "He was a big part of our lineup, but other guys had to step up."

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